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Mohammed Iqbal
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Fugitive Trinamul councillor Mohammed Iqbal alias Munna has visited Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan since leaving the city, always managing to stay a step ahead of the cops.
Munna, an accused in the sub-inspector Tapas Chowdhury murder case, has been avoiding arrest since February 14, the day R.K. Pachnanda was removed as police commissioner ostensibly because of his failure to arrest those named in the FIR.
The CID, which took over the investigation from Calcutta police, has hardly done better.
According to CID, Munna has been like a “hardcore criminal” in avoiding the long arm of the law. “He has not been using his three ATM cards or calling his close relatives so that we cannot track him,” said a senior CID officer. He has been making calls to distant relatives only from public phone booths and they, in turn, have been passing on his messages to his family members.
According to information gathered by the cops, mostly through electronic surveillance, Munna went to Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh and Ara in Bihar, where he used to run a goat trading business.
“He appears to be using PCOs when he is on the move, so that the location of the PCO does not give away his own location,” said an officer.
The police believe that after taking shelter in his deceased brother’s farmhouse at Nazirgunj in Howrah, Munna had sneaked out of Bengal through Raigunj. “He has been to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Delhi. He left each place by the time we learnt he was there,” said an officer.
Sources said the CID was banking on Calcutta police’s inputs to catch Munna. “Not a single raid has been carried out in the past seven days. We need more specific inputs,” said a CID officer.
Abdus Subhan and Md Ibne, two other accused in the murder, were remanded in jail custody on Monday after 14 days in police custody.
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